180 COMPOSITE 



four feet high, thick, hollow, and leafy. It is a very rare plant of fen ditches, 

 chiefly of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. 



11. Field Fleawort (»S'. campisiris). — Woolly ; stem simple; root-leaves 

 elliptical, narrowed below, nearly entire, those of the stems small, lanceolate; 

 flowers in umbels. This plant bears its yellow flowers in May and June. It 

 grows on chalky downs in the middle and south of England, and a tall 

 variety known as var. maritima occurs on some rocks of the seashore at 

 Anglesea. The heads of flowers are erect, from one to six in the cluster ; its 

 flowers are often, when near the sea, much larger than on inland specimens. 



40. Leopard's-bane {Dordnicum). 



1. Great Leopard's-bane {D. pardalidnches). — Leaves hairy, heart- 

 shaped, toothed, lower ones on long stalks, intermediate, with two broad 

 ears at the base, uppermost clasping the stem ; fruit of the disk hairy, 

 of the ray smooth ; perennial. This very rare plant is found on damp 

 and hilly pastures among the mountains of Northumberland, at Cslton, by 

 Norwich ; and it has been found by Mr. Carter in Lord Fitzwilliam's woods, 

 near Peterborough. It occurs in some other places of England, as well as in 

 several of Scotland. It bears its yellow flowers from May to July, those 

 blooming latest overtopping the earlier ones. The stem is two or three feet 

 in height, erect, hollow, hairy, and solitary. The root is tuberous and 

 creeping, and is, as well as that of I), planfagineum, believed to possess an 

 acrid poison. The species is said to take its name from the Greek pardalio, 

 a leopard, and agcho, to strangle, on account of the use made of the plant 

 in destroying wild animals. The French call the plant Doronie ; the 

 .Germans, Gemsenwurz ; the Dutch, JFokerlerj ; the Italians, Spaniards, and 

 Portuguese term it Doronies. The plant has acquired a painful interest, for 

 it is said that Conrad Gesner, who, in his zeal for science, made so many 

 experiments on his own person of the properties of plants, shortened his 

 existence by the use of this acrid herb. In the " Historia Plantarum," 

 believed to be written by Boerhaave, it is related that Gesner took some of 

 this plant in the morning fasting, and wrote, two hours afterwards, a letter 

 to a friend, in which he stated himself to be then in good health. Other 

 friends of the naturalist assert that he had not despatched this letter more 

 than an hour before he was taken ill and expired. This excellent botanist 

 has been called the German Pliny; and Boerhaave termed him that 

 " Monstrum eruditionis." Matthiolus, who long advocated the medicinal use 

 of the Leopard's-bane, relinquished his opinions on finding that it killed 

 a dog to which he gave a dose ; but many modern botanists doubt if the 

 root is so highly poisonous as it has been represented. The question of its 

 dangerous properties is a very old one. Gerarde says : " But for the proof e 

 of the goodnesse of Doronicum, and the reste of his kinde, knowe also that 

 Lobel writeth of one called John de Vroede, who ate very manie of the 

 rootes at sundry times, and found them very pleasant in taste, and very com- 

 fortable ; and thus," he says, "I leave all controversies." 



The Leopard's-bane is very frequent on the mountainous parts of Switzer- 

 land, the Alps, Hungary, Germany, and other parts of Europe, but in this 

 country it is rather a naturalized than a wild plant. Mr. Lightfoot observes, 



